Do you want me in a meeting? I’m there. Do you need my POV on something? I’ll offer it. (sometimes, ok most of the time, unsolicited) Do you want me to share something on email, social or make a phone call? Done. All of these actions are supportive. They offer assistance in order to get something completed. What they are not, is collaborative. I think a lot of teams, both within a department and across departments believe they have a collaborative relationship simply because they are supportive of one another. Certainly being supportive of one another is important. I thrive […]

I am writing this while I am waiting for a meeting to start where the organizer isn’t present. Let’s see how far I get. Communication is at the center of business. Emails, SMS, snaps, IM’s on any one of 10 different platforms, social media – they all tell other people things we are thinking. The plans we are making. Actions that are required. We send emails to gain permission, get intelligence from colleagues we respect or depend on, even deliver artifacts. We often use email to alleviate a meeting. Why waste 15 minutes of time and days waiting for the […]

Companies are ignoring a challenge that is much earlier in the value chain than identifying their customer experience. The desire of senior leaders to mandate a cultural shift from product or service to experience has left a void which is the foundation of its success: Employee Experience. Brands are relentlessly interested in experience. Digital, customer, virtual, physical to name a few. Technology is now the blood line whether the appropriate training or configuration is happening or not. Naturally then, digital tools and applications become the interface for employee and customer alike. Marketing technology is promising a future that is just […]

I would have posted this on my other blog, SHAPING THE GAME, however it ended up becoming a bit colorful and not as prescriptive as STG editorial guidelines would like me to be. (So thanks ‘structure’ and ‘rules’ for ruining my good time). I get pretty excited about Customer Experience. I believe in it. The brands I am a customer of, they believe in it. I enjoy solving business problems through the lens of CX. I like teaching people about CX (though it is pretty straight forward). I like helping people understand how to define it, plan it, execute it, realize it and…. […]

The nature of an agency is to continually be closing new business. It can be, certainly according to sales teams, the single most important aspect of an agency. And you know what, I don’t know that I disagree with them. You could argue that finishing a project on time and on budget is the most important component of the business, but, without the sale, how could you finish it at all. Certainly even if the project goes over on budget and time, and forces an agency to close their doors, the sale extended the imminent no? So that’s my ode […]

You know someone who got divorced? Did they rush into the marriage? Did you and your friends talk about how fast they got together, engaged and married? If marriage is the most important relationship you are going to have in your life (if you choose to), your employment relationships have got to be second. I think of all the things in our lives we spend valuable time considering before entering into a relationship with: Real Estate Agent Bank Cell Carrier Home Contractors vacation plans and yet I still hear about agencies hiring people in record time.

When you manage people and do your best to help guide an organization you often turn to analogy to help get the point across. In the past, especially when teaching students of interactive, I use the analogy of a house when speaking to the structure of a digital property or marketing strategy. HTML is the structure, CSS is the paint etc… it’s not a hard concept to grasp. Often time’s the people I share this with latch onto the story pretty quickly and can hold on with both hands. But the analogy of building the house falls apart when describing […]

I sat at a red light the other day. I was well out of position. I was in the far right lane of a one way street, needing to make a left at the next intersection, another one way street. Truth be told, the left lane was so long that when I coasted up to it, I went to the far right to get the poll position. I sat at the light, gripping the clutch in anticipation, my focus completely on the cross traffic light high on my right, waiting to see it turn yellow then red. That would mean […]

From time to time agency staff can get frustrated with a client. Ninety Nine percent of all clients are delights to work with of course… But, for the purpose of discussion, let’s take an edge case. Often times I see agency expectations of clients far surpass the internal expectations of themselves. Why is that? If an organization was capable or skillful enough to accomplish what they hired you to do, they wouldn’t hire you would they? It seems to me that within interactive and digital production there is a shortcoming in the recognition by Agencies that they are responsible for […]